"Did you look at my brother's letters?" I asked her.
"I don't know nothing about no brother's letters," she replied and went to the stairway. She glanced back at me and then descended.
Was she telling the truth?
I felt guilty about anyone else reading the letters before, I had. Ian would be very disappointed. I returned to my desk and took them out one by one. The return address on every envelope had been torn off. Had Grandmother Emma done that? How was I going to write back to him? I took the bag and lay back on my bed. I decided I would do nothing else before starting to read his letters. There was no address on the letters themselves, either, but at least they were dated. so I knew which one came first.
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Dear Jordan,
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I am sorry I never had the chance to say goodbye to you. I did ask to see you first, but they rushed me out of the house and took me to see a child psychiatrist, Dr. Walker. It didn't take me long to understand what was going on. They didn't realize what I could see, what I could hear, andwhat I could smell. I knew almost immediately that Dr. Walker was a praying mantis.
As I sat there and he listened to me, I saw his real body under the disguise. Remember when I showed you a praying mantis and we saw how still it could be for so long? Remember when I explained that it tries to fool other insects by staying so still it's hard to spot? Well, Dr. Walker was that still. He was looking for a way to trap me, but I was very careful and he finally had to move.
He was even more surprised when I told him I knew Miss Harper was a parasite.
"What do you mean?" Dr. Walker asked.
"Specifically," I told him, "she's a sucking louse, one of some 3300 species of wingless creatures of the order of Phthiraptera."
"How do you know this?" he asked.
"She lived off others and had hoped to suck everything possible out of me, out of my sister and even out of Grandmother Emma," I replied.
You should have seen the look on his face. I could see he was very impressed. I told him about the other insects I had seen, especially the hornets who were disguised as policemen. I told him I knew the institution was really an ant farm. He wrote everything down, and then he smiled and told me he and I would talk often.
Of course 1 knew we would. He was hoping I would tell him everything so he could warn the others.
Instead, I'm warning- you. One of these days, someone will come around to see you and ask you questions about me.
Don't answer any questions until they let you speak to me.
Most important, Jordan. Don't let anyone read the letters I write to you. By now, they have surely sent someone to spy. You won't know who it is and you won't be able to tell what he or she is.
Just be cautious and alert.
Your brother Ian
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I folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. As I did so. I saw that my fingers were trembling. What Ian wrote frightened me. I knew he wasn't joking. Ian rarely told jokes. If he said anything that made other people laugh, it was usually because they didn't understand him. He didn't mean it to be funny; he meant it to be critical.
Things that made other people laugh didn't make him laugh. He barely smiled at something that was supposed to be funny on television, something that would make our father laugh hysterically or even our mother. I would hold back my laugh sometimes and look first at him to see if he thought it was even slightly humorous. It took a lot to get him to go from a smirk to a smile. and I suppose I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times I actually heard the sound of laughter come from his lips.
Despite all that, he never seemed to be particularly sad to me. Things that should have made him unhappy hadn't appeared to bother him at all. No one could ignore people better than Ian could. Up until the moment Miss Harper had taken his private things, he'd acted as if she hadn't been there whenever he'd wanted. I knew that had bothered her more than any complaint I could have made.
If he wasn't being funny in his first letter, then what was he being?
I took out the second letter and unfolded it carefully. Taped to the bottom of a page was what looked like a piece of thread, but next to it he had written: the antennae of a black ant.
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Dear Jordan,
Let me describe the place I am in. It is not exactly a prison even though there are bars on the windows. They won't let me go outside on my own or when I want to go outside. I can go outside only during exercise hours. They have a limited library here. I've asked for some books, but I don't think they'll get them for me. I can't ask you to try to get them because they won't let them through the mail.